April 26, 2024
Jan 23, 2018 -

The Precarious Politics of the Joint Korean Hockey Team

On January 9, roughly 30 years after North Korea bombed a Korean Air passenger plane in protest of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Seoul and Pyongyang announced a stunning diplomatic breakthrough: North Korea would send athletes and performers to participate in the Winter Olympics, which begin on February 9 in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Then, 11 days later, the International Olympics Committee approved an ambitious proposal from South Korea: the formation of a joint women’s ice hockey team with North Korea. The team, which will be created by adding 12 North Korean players to the South Korean roster, would be the first of its kind to compete in an Olympic event.

Seoul pitched the plan as a way to ease long-standing political and military tensions on the peninsula, even going so far as to bill the upcoming games the “Peace Olympics.” Kim Kyung Sung, head of the government-affiliated South and North Korean Sports Exchange Association, said “[t]he significance of the two nations that share a bloodline playing together on a single team cannot be overstated.” The merging of the teams, he said, “would be a natural way for them to move from a relationship of conflict to one of dialogue.”

Yet with the Olympics less than a month away, many South Koreans have said that the groundbreaking plan would undermine the spirit of fair competition, partly at the expense of the South Korean players, who might find themselves fighting for playing time. Others countries, like Switzerland, have argued that the joint team would enjoy unfair advantages over the competition.

For more read the full of article at The Atlantic

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